markpkessinger
markpkessinger's JournalCame across a wonderful New York story about Harry Belafonte . . .
. . . In 1958, when he was already an international start, Belafonte and his wife were looking for an apartment in Manhattan. He saw one that he really wanted -- a 21-room, 6-bedroom sprawler at 300 West End Avenue. At the time, though, many Manhattan landlords would refuse to rent to black tenants, even very prominent, wealthy ones like Belafonte. So Belafonte sent his white manager to fill out the application and paperwork as if for himself, and then, when it was approved, signed the lease in his own name.
When the landlord found out he had a black tenant, he promptly asked Belafonte to leave. Belafonte was so furious at the insult that he bought the entire building. And one of the first tenants he brought in was singer Lena Horne, who rented the penthouse. She and her white husband had been living for years out of hotels because of the same prejudice!
Belafonte eventually converted the building to a co-op, and he continued to reside there for nearly 50 years!
Cultural norms and the danger of parochial moral absolutism
If the kerfuffle over the Dalai Lama's interaction with a young boy demonstrates anything, it should be to drive home the danger and folly of viewing the customs of a foreign culture through a lens of moral absolutism grounded in the values of our own culture only, even, and especially, when we are a little too arrogantly sure that our society's values are oh-so-enlightened. Reading some of the comments on this board made me think that perhaps all of us are in need of a refresher in Anthropology 101!
The reality is that customs that look very weird and inappropriate in the context of our culture might be thoroughly appropriate in the context of another. (If you haven't yet watched the video posted by Richard D in which a young Tibetan man explains the context for kissing on the lips and sticking out tongues, I urge you to do so (see https://www.democraticunderground.com/1017820070 ).
The important thing to remember is that a gesture that seems, and indeed may be, wildly inappropriate in one cultural context can be utterly benign in another. And when we lose sight of that, even the most progressive among us can wind up looking like cultural boors!
Profile Information
Member since: Sat May 15, 2010, 04:48 PMNumber of posts: 8,395
